A great horned owl and owl chick were spotted in a nest across the street from the bison paddock in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on Sunday. Richmond District resident David Cruz kept an eye on a pair of owls that hunt near the casting pools and snapped some pictures Sunday of the mother and one of two chicks that hatched in the last few weeks.

1 Response to great horned owl chicks hatch in golden gate park

I was very impressed by the scientific approach being used to groom the landscape of Central Park. It is in stark contrast to the haphazard way the parks of San Francisco are being managed.

For example, chemicals are apparently not being used to keep the water bodies in Central Park clear of vegetation and unwanted algae. Unfortunately San Francisco’s so-called Natural Areas Program is spraying toxic chemicals in the water bodies in San Francisco’s parks (Pine Lake, Lake Merced, Islais Creek and its watershed of Twin Peaks)..

Here is an article about a recent spraying of a combination of glyphosate and Milestone at Pine Lake: http://sutroforest.com/2012/02/07/pine-lake-with-pollution-and-pesticides/.. Ironically, this spraying cooincided with the posting of water pollution at Pine Lake by the Dept of Public Health. The pollution was apparently bacterial. The Dept of Public Health doesn’t test San Francisco’s water bodies for pesticides. Nor does the Dept of the Environment which is responsible for oversight of pesticide applications.

The Natural Areas Program sprayed the misnamed “natural areas” 86 times in 2011. This was a 330% increase in pesticide sprayings in the past 4 years.